Reading The Host
by Lady Loophole
Summary: READ THE BOOK FIRST! SPOILER! When they get back from a raid, Wanda finds a book amongst their stuff. Guess what book it is! What are the people's reactions when they read it? Rated T cuz it's meant for Teens anyway in the book. :)


**Disclaimer: I am not Stephanie Meyer. I don't own the book or any of the characters. **

We were unloading from our most recent raid. Everything was already in the caves, the vehicles were put back in their hiding spots, and me, Ian, Kyle, Sunny, Melanie, Jared, Jamie, Jeb, and Doc were going through all the stuff. I was sorting the clothes into different piles according to size and gender when I found a book in the midst of it all. I stopped and pulled it out and examined it.

It was called _The Host_.

"What is that Wanda?" Ian asked me.

"It's a book. I found it in the clothes. But I don't remember getting a book." I frowned.

"What's it called? I wouldn't mind takin' a break myself." Jeb said.

"The Host." I replied.

"What's it about?" Doc asked curiously.

I read the summary and blushed. I scanned through the pages quickly, shut the book, and looked down at my feet, aware of all the stares on me. I disliked how this body betrayed my emotions so clearly.

"Well?" Jared asked.

"It seems that it's about…what I thought while I experienced my time on Earth at first." I blushed deeper.

"Well, I'd like to read that. I want to know more about you." Ian said. "Let's take a vote. All in favor of reading raise your hand."

I looked up and saw everyone's hand raised.

"Who wants to read first?"

"I'll do it." Jeb said.

Of course.

Everybody sat down while Jeb prepared to read.

**Prologue-Inserted**

I watched as all the humans shuddered at the thought as Jeb read it.

**The Healer's name was Fords Deep Waters. Because he was a soul, by nature he was all things good: compassionate, patient, honest, virtuous, and full of love.**

Ian pulled me onto his lap.

**Anxiety was an unusual emotion for Fords Deep Waters.**

**Irritation was even rarer. However, because Fords Deep Waters lived inside a human body, irritation was sometimes inescapable.**

I nodded unconsciously, knowing only how true that was.

**As the whispers of the Healing students buzzed in the far corner of the operating room, his lips pressed together in a tight line. The expression felt out of place on a mouth that was more often given to smiling.**

**Darren, his regular assistant, saw the grimace and patted his shoulder.**

"**They're just curious, Fords," he said quietly.**

"**An insertion is hardly an interesting or challenging procedure. Any soul on the street could perform it in an emergency. There's nothing for them to learn by observing today." Fords was surprised to hear the sharp edge marring his normally soothing voice.**

"**They've never seen a grown human before," Darren said.**

**Fords raised one eyebrow. "Are they blind to each other's faces? Do they not have mirrors?"**

Everybody chuckled at that. I somewhat missed Fords. He was a good Healer.

"**You know what I mean-a wild human. Still soulless. One of the insurgents."**

**Fords looked at the girl's unconscious body, laid out facedown on the operating table. Pity swelled in his heart as he remembered the condition her poor, broken body had been in when the Seekers had brought her to the Healing Facility. Such pain she'd endured…**

Mel and I flinched remembering the pain all too well. Ian hugged me while Jared wrapped his arms around Mel.

**Of course she was perfect now- completely healed. Fords had seen to that.**

"**She looks the same as any of us," Fords murmured to Darren. "We all have human faces. And when she wakes up, she will be one of us too." **

I heard Jared hiss and then he sent me an apologetic smile. I sent a smile back in return. I understood.

"**It's just exciting for them, that's all."**

"**The soul we implant today deserves more respect than to have her host body gawked at this way. She'll already have far too much to deal with as she acclimates. It's not fair to put her through this." By **_**this**_**, he did not mean the gawking. Fords heard the sharp edge return to his voice.**

**Darren patted him again. "It will be fine. The Seeker needs information and-"**

**At the word **_**Seeker**_**, Fords gave Darren a look that could only be described as a glare.**

"I like this Healer." Kyle said. Some people murmured their agreement.

**Darren blinked in shock.**

Some people rolled their eyes. Sunny and I did not because it is not natural for a soul around other souls to have a need to glare.

"**I'm sorry," Fords apologized at once. "I didn't mean to react so negatively. It's just that I feasr for this soul."**

**His eyes moved to the cryotank on its stand beside the table. The light was a steady, dull red, indicating that is was occupied and in hibernation mode.**

"**This soul was specially picked for the assignment," Darren said soothingly. "She is exceptional among our kind-braver than most. Her lives speak for themselves. I think she would volunteer, if it were possible to ask her."**

I felt all the eyes in the room on me.

"Would you have volunteered Wanda?" Jamie asked me.

"If I knew that all this would happen, then yes. If I didn't…I might…I might have seen it as a way to help my community…"

Melanie smiled at me and Jamie beamed, seeming to have ignored the last part.

"**Who among us would not volunteer if asked to do something for the greater good? But is that really the case here? Is the greater good served by this? The question is not her willingness, but what it is right to ask any soul to bear."**

**The Healing students were discussing the hibernating soul as well. Fords could hear the whispers clearly; their voices were rising now, getting louder with their excitement.**

"**She's lived on six planets."**

"**I heard seven."**

"**I heard she's never lived two terms as the same host species."**

"**Is that possible?"**

"**She's been almost everything. A Flower, a Bear, A Spider-"**

"**A See Weed, a Bat-"**

"**Even a Dragon!"**

"**I don't believe it-not seven planets."**

"**At least seven. She started on the Origin."**

"**Really? The Origin?"**

"Quite the celebrity, eh, Wanda?" Jeb winked at me.

I blushed settled deeper in to Ian's arms; sinking into his lap.

"**Quiet, please!" Fords interrupted. "If you cannot observe professionally and silently, then I will have to ask you to remove yourselves."**

**Abashed, the six students fell silent and edged away from one away.**

"**Let's get on with this, Darren."**

Everything was prepared. The appropriate medicines were laid our beside the human girl. Her long dark hair was secured beneath a surgical cap, exposing her slender neck. Deeply sedated, she breathed slowly in and out. Her sun-browned skin had barely a mark to show for her…accident.

"Begin thaw sequence now, please, Darren."

The gray-haired assistant was already waiting beside the cryotank, his hand resting on the dial. He flipped the safety back and spun down on the dial. The red light atop the small gray cylinder began to pulse, flashing faster as the seconds passed, changing color.

Fords concentrated on the unconscious body; he edged the scalpel through the skin at the base of the subject's skull with small, precise movements, and then sprayed on the medication that stilled the excess flow of blood before he widened the fissure.

"I could use some of that." Doc said.

We all nodded. Nobody liked seeing a lot of lost blood. They disliked cleaning it up even more.

Fords delved delicately beneath the neck muscles, careful not to injure them, exposing the pale bones at the top of the spinal column.

Melanie frowned. I doubted she liked hearing about her body that way.

"The soul is ready, Fords," Darren informed him.

"So am I. Bring her."

Fords felt Darren at his elbow and knew without looking that his assistant would be prepared, his hand stretched out and waiting; they had worked together for many years now. Ford sheld the gap open.

"Send her home," he whispered.

Darren's hand moved into view, the silver gleam of an awaking soul in his cupped palm.

Fords never saw an exposed soul without being struck by the beauty of it.

Ian whispered in my ear, " You are so beautiful my Wanderer." His arms tightened around me.

The soul shone in the brilliant lights of the operating room, brighter than the reflective silver instrument in his hand. Like a living ribbon, she twisted and rippled, stretching, happy to be free of the cryotank. Her thin, feathery attachments, nearly a thousand of them, billowed softly like pale silver hair. Though they were all lovely, this one seemed particularly graceful to Fords Deep Waters.

He was not alone in his reaction. He heard Darren's soft sigh, heard the admiring murmurs of the students.

Gently, Darren placed the small glistening creature inside the opening Fords had made in the human's neck. The soul slid smoothly into the offered space, weaving herself into the alien anatomy. Fords admired the skill with which she possessed her new home. Her attachments wound tightly into place around the nerve centers, some elongating and reaching deeper to where he couldn't see, under and up into the brain, the optic nerves, the ear canals.

Some people looked a little disgusted at the visual painted in their minds by this description.

She was very quick, very firm in her movements. Soon, only one small segment of her glistening body was visible.

"Well done," he whispered to her, knowing that she could not hear him. The human girl was the one with the ears, and she still slept soundly.

It was routine matter to finish the job. He cleaned and healed the wound, applied the salve that sealed the incision closed behind the soul, and then brushed the scar-softening poweder across the line on her neck.

"Perfect, as usual," said the assistant, who, for some reason unfathomable to Fords, had never made a change from his human host's name, Darren.

Fords sighed. " I regret this day's work."

"You're only doing your duty as a Healer."

"This is the rare occasion when Healing creates an injury."

Darren began to clean up the workstation. He didn't seem to know how to answer. Fords was filling his Calling.

"Calling?" Jeb asked.

"Like a job offer." I explained.

That was enough for Darren.

But not enough for Fords Deep Waters, who was a true Healer to the core of his being. He gazed anxiously at the human female's body, peaceful in slumber, knowing that this peace would be shattered as soon as she awoke. All of the horror of this young woman's end would be borne by the innocent soul he'd just placed inside her.

As he leaned over the human and whispered in her ear, Fords wished fervently that the soul inside could hear him now.

"Good luck, little wanderer, good luck. How I wish you didn't need it."

"That's all." Jeb announced. "Who wants to read next?"

"I'd like to read." Doc said.

Jeb passed him the book and we got ready for the next chapter.


End file.
